


À côté de toi - Of French textbooks and puppy love

by katiessr



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder! John, Eventual Fluff, Fluff, French theme, M/M, Please don't be too hard on me, Sassy Sherlock, Slow Burn, Swearing, Teenlock, This is my first work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 23:45:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9792365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katiessr/pseuds/katiessr
Summary: Sherlock's brother Mycroft has left home and moved to the city of London. Knowing their other son has no desire to stay in the small town in Devon where teenagers bully and teachers despise the tall boy with the curly hair, sharp tongue and a mind so much more profound than theirs, his parents choose to leave their old lives behind and follow.There, Sherlock ends up sitting next to a boy with golden hair and indigo eyes and the most angelic smile anyone could possibly have, and French class suddenly becomes a lot less dull than it used to be. A boy who struggles with his own mind sometimes, a boy who's soft and messy and gentle and endearing and holds his hand under the table like a lifeline when his worrying gets the best of him, pale, long fingers intertwined with short, tan and trembling ones. And soon, Sherlock finds himself drawn in by John's charm, dwindling down a spiral at the bottom of which bliss and hell and excitement and fear await, all at the same time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> As mentioned in the tags, this is my first story. Feedback of all kinds is greatly appreciated. 
> 
> I want to dedicate this story to Anaïs who made me write it in the first place and helps me greatly with her thoughts, support and passion.  
> I also would like to thank my betas, Anna and Laura. You guys are great and I am so thankful for your input.
> 
> John has a bit of an anxiety disorder in this story, but I, as a fellow sufferer, will not make this angsty or triggering and definitely avoid romanticisation. It mainly focuses on Sherlock comforting him if he's worrying too much again.
> 
> I would especially thank you for reading this at all, and wish you great fun while doing so.

William Sherlock Scott Holmes was not an ordinary boy.

For one, anyone who had spent mere minutes in his presence could confirm that nothing about him was _ordinary._ The pure fact that he insisted on being called "Sherlock" when he could have chosen from the extensive repertoire of all the names and nicknames one could possibly derivate from "William" said quite a lot about his willingness to fit in with the crowd.  
His overpowering intellect certainly did its fair share as well, distinguishing him so very clearly from everyone else, his mind reaching depths and horizons other people didn't even dare to dream of. 

But also, most of his peers doubted he was even a _boy._ Jumping from ballet lessons to classical violin playing, Sherlock Holmes showed no interest in confirming to the given standard of masculinity, which earned him quite a few beatings and even more people calling him "faggot".  
Of course he knew that these interests did not make him any less of a man, if anything they set him apart from the grey mass that blindly did whatever the status quo expected them to. The verbal attacks had stopped hurting him a long time ago, now he merely felt annoyance at the lack of originality and ideas.  
I mean, _faggot._ Come on.

The beatings the 16-year-old had to endure, on the other hand, could not be discarded based on their level of inventiveness. Regardless of how primitive and dull and _repetitive_ it was to beat people up based on their enjoyment of audio waves that were not produced by a computer in Beverly Hills, CA, the damage it did certainly left its marks.  
And because Sherlock Holmes was not willing to let physical abuse based on his affinity for dance and the violin (and occasionally looking at boys' arses) interfere with daily life at his new school, he swore himself to utter secrecy regarding the ways he liked to spend his leisure time. 

Sherlock couldn't say that he was particularly sad when his parents had broken to him that they'd be moving to London to be closer to Mycroft's work and support him in his involvement with the British government. The latter had still lived at his parents' house until very much recently when he had finally made the decision to move out and settle down in London. Their parents, being protective and well aware of the fact that Sherlock had no intentions to stay in the two-horse town in Devon they were currently residing in once he had graduated, had chosen to follow so they could be closer to their eldest. On top of that, Victoria Holmes had noticed more and more bruises peeking over the hems of cashmere clothing, contrasting with her son's skin, deep purple against ivory. Every try of hers to express her concern had been met with cold looks, turned backs and harsh words. Sherlock Holmes did not like admitting weakness.

So since she had failed to intervene the gradual worsening in the number of blue spots he exhibited, Mrs. Holmes, who knew her son's headmaster was a homophobic idiot who probably would have liked to congratulate Sherlock's peers on beating the boy in a tutu who kept correcting him, chose it would be best to remove him from this toxic environment. He deserved better, and she knew it. 

Boxes packed and travel sickness medication taken, Sherlock strolled through the house he got to call his childhood home for one last time. He tried to memorise it, take it all in, put the sensations and stimuli away in a jar in the corner of his mind, accessible at all times, conserved and eternalised. He absorbed the faint smell of ebony flooring and the way it creaked and bent under his step, he took in how those noises echoed from the bland walls and fought their way through the heavy, sun-lit air in which the dust danced to a choreography known to no one but mother nature herself.

And just like that, memories resurfaced, of hot summer days spent inside with his mother's homemade lemonade and a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers, and of nights when he snuck out of his bedroom in secret to watch the adults (He couldn't sleep and his bedroom was boring and the voices and laughter and chatter coming from the living room was so much more _interesting_ ) and the floor straight up betrayed him with its loud creaking and groaning, revealing the young boy's wrongdoing to his mother's skilled ears.  
Sherlock let a weary sigh escape his chapped, pink lips. While he certainly wasn't the sensitive type that got attached to _locations_ , this house held some sort of sentimental value to him. He had spent the past 16 years and 284 days living there, after all.

See; If there was one thing that this boy valued, it was intelligence. And where else had he acquired all of this so utterly precious knowledge if not here? Certainly not in the cracked, leaking walls of his local school's buildings, where teachers had never been particularly fond of the boy with the curly hair and sharp tongue and a mind so much more profound than theirs, that had mastered trigonometry at age nine ( _easy_ ) and was fluent in three languages by year six. No, the soil in which his intellectuality had both taken root and blossomed was his dad's heavy books and his mum's eager tongue, teaching him about the world and telling stories and making him wonder, shielded from the universe by the thick walls of their trusty, ancient home.

But all things had to come to an end, and if fleeing this shithole of a small town meant having to leave a location with a slight nostalgic connotation behind, he was more than happy to do so.  
And just like that, Sherlock Holmes pivoted and made his way to his parents' car with a steady, decided pace.

 

\------------

 

Gathering his strength, he pressed the heavy wood door open with his shoulder. He wasn't used to straining his body for the sake of opening a bloody door, and while his young self definitely could have handled doing so once or twice, the repeated procedure of carrying boxes in and out was taking a toll on his physical comfort. Well-hidden by a dark blue jumper, his skin had already taken on a quite vibrant shade of red right above the round, blue bruise that graced his shoulder blade (Thanks, Jimmy).  
Honestly, who had designed this constructional failure of a door? 

Sherlock headed down the narrow corridor with his heels clacking on the stone flooring, dirt from the streets lingering on the tiles like a grey veil and slightly muffling the sound. The big box in his arms partially blocking his sight, the young man started his way up the stairs. When he had reached what he supposed had to be the last step he continued down the hall to the open door of their new apartment and set the accumulation of various household items down onto the herringbone parquet floor.  
"Oh, there you are, dear!" his mother exclaimed in a light-hearted tone. "Now, if you could help me unpack the microwave, it's just over there, in th-"

His father's voice, coming from the office space down the hall, interrupted her. 

"Give the boy a _break_ , Vicky. Let him breathe for a second. Sherlock, you can go take a look at your new home first, you haven't even had time to properly do that. Look, if you go up the stairs you come up facing north, your room's the one to the left, with the big windows."

Of course Sherlock knew where his room was, or what it looked like. He had seen the plans and the pictures his parents had taken during their trip to London to view some lofts, and that often enough. But at the moment, he was more than grateful that his father had given him the chance to escape the mess and just pause for a second to adjust himself to this new life in this new home in this new city.

His mother pouted, but before she had the chance to protest, Sherlock had already leaped to the spiral staircase and started making his way upstairs, taking two steps at a time and only slowing his fast pace when he had reached the top (panting), strolling to the room on the left. 

He ignored his parents' bickering downstairs and pushed down the golden door handle while drawing in a deep breath.

The room, his room, was quiet and sun-lit, though not as bright as it must have been a few hours prior when the sun had still shone through the big windows on the east side. Most of his furniture had already been assembled by the workers of the moving company that his parents had hired to spare themselves the hassle of transporting and putting together beds, drawers and dressers, which gave everything a more complete atmosphere. 

After scanning the room for a couple of seconds, he finally spotted the box his violin lay in, engulfed in layers of bubble wrap and cotton, with a big "fragile" sticker fastened to the cardboard so the workers wouldn't treat it too carelessly. Sherlock took it out, thoroughly removing layer after layer of the wrapping until he held the black case in his pale hands. He then went on to snap the lock open, which revealed the smooth surface of his favourite (and perhaps, only) companion.  
"Let's test the acoustics in here, shall we?" he murmured to himself, a smile stretching his pink lips, his voice raspy and low. 

\------------

Careful not to place his foot into the puddle on his right-hand side, he set one polished shoe onto the wet tarmac. It was drizzling, like had been for the majority of November that year, so Sherlock Holmes hurried to leave the car in order to be able to open his umbrella and avoid his dark curls getting all soaked and frizzy like they tended to.  
In front of him, his new school towered into the sky like an ominous and dark figure, strange and unknown. 

Hushing some words of farewell to his father, he headed towards the old building with a determined step and a less determined mind. The latter was racing, processing new data each second and estimating different ways and likelihoods how this morning could possibly go. 

He tightened his scarf (blue; angora wool; birthday present) around his neck to protect and warm a patch of exposed, pale skin, trying to stay discrete and blend in with the crowd.

Having reached the tall entrance door by now, he pulled and stepped into the spacious foyer that was crowded with teenagers, closing his umbrella and shaking it so the excess water would drop down onto the stone floor. Laughter, chatter and moans reached his ears from all angles and almost hurt them through the sheer volume of the voices that filled the buzzing air.

With big strides, he fought his way through the crowd, utilising his good shoulder and elbows from time to time when whoever was blocking his path proved themselves to be too stubborn to move on their own, until he had reached the secretary's office.  
Pale knuckles met wood, and he knocked.

A telephone between her left shoulder and ear, a middle-aged woman (39, he estimated, give or take a year) with strawberry-blonde curls opened the door and mouthed "Come on in". She was wearing a pencil skirt (red) and a mustard-coloured cardigan (cheap) and seemed slightly overwhelmed by the fast and aggressive talking coming from the other end of the line.

The secretary, as Sherlock had figured, spoke. 

"Mrs Miller, I am sorry your son's water bottle was lost, excuse me, stolen, but it is not the school's duty to-"

More aggressive rambling from the other side of the line.

"I'm afraid we will not be taking responsibility... No, yes, feel free to e-mail the headmaster if you want to... It is not... Yeah, you too have a very nice day. Bye!"

The last two lines were spoken with such an exaggerated sweetness that, paired with the forced, fake grin on the woman's face, Sherlock couldn't help but snort at the ridiculousness of the scene. 

After a few deep breaths and a strong, forceful putting down of the telephone that had still rested in her hand, the woman inhaled and looked up to smile at Sherlock. 

"You must be Sherlock Holmes."

It wasn't a question.

"I indeed am."

"I'm Rosie Cheshire, the secretary, very nice to meet you." 

Ew. She sounded like she meant it, too. 

"I'm responsible for the administration here, as well as listening to enraged mothers complain about the mistreatment of their spoilt brats on the phone."  
She smiled warmly, rolling her eyes a bit. 

"Now, before we take a look at your schedule, I would like to know your address, birthday and the phone number of your legal guardian so I can put you in our register..."

____

 

Not being able to help cocking his right eyebrow from time to time, he answered all of her questions more or less patiently (No, he did _not_ want to participate in the drama club, thank you very much, Rosie.) until she finally put the last bit of information into her computer and beamed at him again.  
God, did this woman ever stop smiling? Didn't she have anything to be sad about, like the fact she was stuck in a school with a bunch of uncultured teens, barely even earning enough to be able to afford some clothes that did not look...

"That's it! Welcome to Saint Paul College. Now, I'm just gonna escort you to your first class." 

Again, that damn grin! 

Sherlock had already opened his mouth to ensure that he was indeed perfectly capable of walking to a French classroom himself, but she put up her hand to stop his protest.  
"No refusing. The bell has already rung quite some time ago and I'm sure you will not leave a nice first impression on Mrs. Smith if you just go and disrupt her class like that."  
Great. His first day at this bloody school and he would already be making an entrance, a fact he hadn't considered until just now. Sighing, the tall boy rose from the black chair he had spent the last 23 minutes on and let the woman lead him to room 221b. 

It wasn't a long distance to cross, but with a bubbly secretary talking one's ear off (had he just got unlucky or did she tell every student about her sister's engagement to a doctor?) it certainly felt like one. 

Once they had arrived, she shot him one last cheerful glance before knocking on the narrow door, which was met by a less than enthusiastic _"Come on in"_ from someone in there.  
"Hello, Barbara. Sorry for disturbing you. Uhm, this is your new student, the one I told you about, Sherlock Holmes," the blonde explained, the mentioning of his name earning some whispering and snickering from the pupils. So much for going unnoticed.

A tall, dark skinned woman signalled him to come in, raising her eyebrows only to draw them back down immediately after in what he supposed was meant to be an assuring gesture.

"Good luck," Rosie whispered to him, beaming and winking at him one last time before leaving the room for good and loudly closing the door behind her.  
Finally! Wow, he already hated that woman uninhibitedly. 

An awkward silence fell over the room for some seconds, penetrated only by the loud ticking coming from the clock above the blackboard, until the teacher cleared her throat to speak.

"Oui, alors, bienvenue, Sherlock." 

Again, giggles at his name. How mature.  
At least _his_ parents had shown some originality.

Sherlock quickly scanned the classroom. It was filled with students of his age sitting in pairs at double desks, most of which had been moved together to abolish the spaces in-between and form longer series of seats.

"Asseyez-vous. I think there's a free space next to John, isn't there? I'm sure he's more than happy to scoot over a bit. Aren't you, Mister Watson?"

A golden-haired head shot up, and its owner, apparently John (a rugby player?), met Sherlock's gaze, eye to eye,  
blue to blue.


End file.
